Religion in Papua New Guinea is predominantly Christian, with traditional animism and ancestor worship often occurring less openly as another layer underneath or more openly side by side Christianity. The courts and government in both theory and practice uphold a constitutional right to freedom of speech, thought, and belief. A large majority of Papua New Guineans identify themselves as members of a Christian church (96% in the 2000 census); however, many combine their Christian faith with traditional indigenous beliefs and practices.[2] Other religions represented in the country include the Bahá'í faith and Islam.[3]

The 2010 Report on International Religious Freedom by the United States Department of State states that religious participations in the country are relatively peaceful and no reports of conflict are being reported. Public schools host a religious subject once per week and representatives of Christian churches teach the lessons, and the students attend the class operated by the church of their parents' choice. Children whose parents do not wish them to attend the classes are excused. Members of non-Christian religious groups are not numerous, and they use family and group gatherings before and after school for religious lessons.[4]

The Summer Institute of Linguistics is a missionary institution drawing its support from conservative evangelical Protestant churches in the United States and to a lesser extent Australia; it translates the Bible into local languages and conducts extensive linguistic research.

The Bahá'í Faith in Papua New Guinea begins after 1916 with a mention by `Abdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, that Bahá'ís should take the religion there.[6] The first Bahá'ís move there (what Bahá'ís mean by "pioneering",) in Papua New Guinea arrived there in 1954.[7] With local converts the first Bahá'í Local Spiritual Assembly was elected in 1958.[8] The first National Spiritual Assembly was then elected in 1969.[9] According to the census of 2000 the number of Bahá'ís does not exceed 21000.[10] But the Association of Religion Data Archives (relying on World Christian Encyclopedia) estimated three times more Bahá'ís at 60000 or 0.9% of the nation in 2005[11] Either way it is the largest minority religion in Papua New Guinea, if a small one. Among its more well known members are Margaret Elias and Sirus Naraqi.

Elias is the daughter of the first Papuan woman on the national assembly,[12] and the country's first woman lawyer (in the 1970s),[13] who attended the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women and was awarded in 1995 and 2002 for her many years in the public service, particularly as in the national government and went on to support various initiatives for education.[14]

Threlfall, Neville: One Hundred Years in the Islands. The Methodist/United Church in the New Guinea Islands Region 1875-1975, The United Church (New Guinea Islands Region), Toksave na Buk dipatmen: Rabaul 1975, ISBN 0-86938-016-8

Laracy, Hugh: Marists and Melanesians. A History of Catholic Missions in the Salomon Islands, Australian National University Press: Canberra 1976, ISBN 0-7081-0404-5

Wetherell, David: Reluctant Mission: The Anglican Church in Papua New Guinea, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia 1977. ISBN 978-0-7022-1411-0

Strelan, John G.: Search for Salvation. Studies in the History and Theology of Cargo Movements, Lutheran Publishing House: Adelaide 1977. ISBN 978-0-85910-037-3

Böhm, Karl: The life of some island people of New Guinea: a missionary's observations of the Volcanic Islands of Manam, Boesa, Biem, and Ubrub, Introduction by Nancy Lutkehaus, (Collectanea Instituti Anthropos Vol. 29), Dietrich Reimer Verlag: Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-496-00725-7

Garrett, John: Where Nets Were Cast: Christianity in Oceania Since World War II, Institute of Pacific Studies , University of the South Pacific in association with the World Council of Churches, Suva and Geneva 1997.

Whitehouse, Harvey: From Mission to Movement: The Impact of Christianity on Patterns of Political Association in Papua New Guinea, in: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4-1 (1998), p. 43-63.

Gewertz, D. and F. Errington: On PepsiCo and piety in Papua New Guinea modernity, in American Ethnologist 23, p. 476-493.

^Marty Zelenietz, Shirley Lindenbaum -Sorcery and Social Change in Melanesia 1981- Page 66 The body shadow or reflection of the tamam cannot fuse with & finiik in the ancestral underworld, for a "witch's" finiik spirit entirely disintegrates at death. There are no tamam in the idyllic abode of the ancestors.